Most contingencies on a VA purchase are the standard ones on any residential contract. The VA-specific piece is the escape clause. A typical purchase agreement includes appraisal, home inspection, and loan contingencies, plus periods to review seller disclosures, HOA documents, and title, and sometimes a contingency tied to selling another property. Those protect any buyer, VA or otherwise. What VA adds is the escape clause attached to the contract. If the appraised value comes in below the purchase price, the buyer is not obligated to move forward and cannot lose earnest money over it. On a VA loan the clause is federally mandated and cannot be waived by the buyer, the seller, or the lender, and it operates independently of any appraisal contingency in the contract. FHA has a parallel amendatory clause that works the same way in most transactions, though FHA carves out exemptions where it is not required, such as HUD-owned sales and certain new construction. The wrinkle that matters in competitive markets: some VA and FHA buyers waive the ordinary appraisal contingency to strengthen an offer, but the escape clause still stands behind that waiver. The seller signs an acknowledgment that they cannot force a VA or FHA buyer to complete the purchase if the home does not appraise. Jeb has been on the seller side of this on one of his own transactions, weighing a waived-appraisal FHA offer, and ultimately went with a competing conventional offer partly because the clause meant the FHA offer was less locked-in than it looked. So a VA or FHA buyer should understand the clause as a protection, and a seller should read a waived appraisal on those offers with exactly that flexibility in mind.